“Whew! boss, you paid far too much; don’t know as you know it, but just now the Americans are buying lighter horses, and horses of this stamp don’t sell so well. Now, if you were to say $130, I might—”
“John, take him back to his stall, for I am afraid this gentleman and I can’t agree.” And John turns the horse for the stable door.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, boss; perhaps we can split the difference.” An appeal, as before, to “split the difference.” But at this stage of the dicker I am thoroughly disgusted, and wonder if it be necessary to practise so much deceit and cunning in the purchase and sale of a horse simply.
I reply that $140 is my price, and not a cent less. “Well, boss, I guess I’ll take him, but you’re a very impatient man anyway. There’s a blanket on the fence; I suppose you’ll throw that in, and, of course, the halter now on him.”
In sheer desperation to get rid of this pest of a buyer, I give up the blanket, and the horse is put in the buyer’s charge. “Grand growing weather now, boss; hope your turnips haven’t been eaten by the fly;” and thus the conversation drifts to polite subjects, and he inquires as to the health of the family, and I can do no less than reciprocate and ask him if his care are likewise well.
There’s something mean about the whole transaction, and one feels that his manhood is lowered by his “dickering.” This buyer knew that my horse was richly worth all I asked for him at the first, but he formed a deliberate plan to cheat me out of just as many dollars as he could by lying, or by running my horse down contrary to his own deliberate judgment.
There’s a gathering at neighbor Jones’s, and I see over the fields a lot of carriages in the road. Looking still, I see the village hearse come driving down the road towards the house, with its black plumes nodding as the wheels feel the inequalities of the road. More of the neighbors have collected, and now I see the pastor of one of the village churches coming in his light covered carriage.
“So Mr. Jones’s eldest boy has gone, boss, and it will likely be rather hard on the old man, for he did think a lot of the boy, even if he did run away from him,” neighbor Dixon remarks to me as he is driving by to the funeral. This neighbor Jones is one of the fore-handed farmers of Ontario, and the only quality that can be praised about him in any way is his industry. Up before day dawn, winter and summer, and drudging daily till dark at night, and his wife’s just like him.
He’d only two boys, and this oldest one was so harried at home that two years ago he ran away to Texas and became a cowboy. Only a few short weeks ago he returned with seeds of that dreadful malarial fever in his system, and only to die. The second boy is not yet old enough to run away, but in the ordinary course of events, as soon as he does get old enough, he’ll follow his poor dead brother’s example.
This Jones is a Yorkshire man, and his wife is a North of Ireland woman. Last winter they boarded the school-master. At four o’clock of a winter morning this dame would call him up for breakfast. For some days the school-master stood it meekly, until he finally told Mrs. Jones that this first meal would do for a lunch, and that he’d take some breakfast before he went to school. It is a large farm-house Jones has, and it is nicely painted and well finished, and for a marvel contains really good and appropriate furniture. The matter of furniture can be explained, for Jones sold a lot of hay to some cabinet-maker, and being afraid of his pay was glad to get the furniture.